Sunday, February 6, 2011

If the NFL owners hate them, that's good enough for me

I don't really follow pro football much (a strike in the early 1980s made me realize I could spend my Monday nights otherwise occupied with no significant loss). I couldn't name more than one or two players on their team this season, but if I see it's a Packers game on the TV I always root for them.

It's kind of a perverse version of a great Hyman Roth line from The Godfather, Part II:

I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstien fixed the World Series in 1919.

The Packers’ unique setup has created a relationship between team and community unlike any in the N.F.L. Wisconsin fans get to enjoy the team with the confidence that their owner won’t threaten to move to Los Angeles unless the team gets a new mega-dome. Volunteers work concessions, with sixty per cent of the proceeds going to local charities. Even the beer is cheaper than at a typical N.F.L. stadium.

May the best theory of ownership win.

(Only the NFL owners could take a bunch of millionaires with attitude control issues and make them the victims of the story by threatening to lock them out in a union dispute. Well played, gentlemen. Well played.)

Nothstine is a writer, editor, political junkie, and renegade professor. Contact him here.

*Why p3?

"A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others." -Thomas Jefferson (1826)